Review: Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North by Sarah Handley-Cousins

To read an interview with author Sarah Handley-Cousins click here.

In Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North, Sarah Handley-Cousins brings the reader past the medical fascination and bare statistics of Civil War casualties and injuries to look at Civil War disability from a more social and cultural view. The amputated leg or empty sleeve were prominent symbols of Civil War disability and the sacrifice of Union soldiers, but Handley-Cousins moves past that more visible and often used disability to examine those injuries less visible and more hidden. In doing so she gives the reader a fuller and more human perspective on the lasting impact of the Civil War. As she states, “Disability is a necessary by-product of war, and without coming to terms with that reality, we will never understand the full experience of this conflict…” (135).

To move beyond the typical view of the amputee as the symbol of the Civil War disabled, Handley-Cousins first examines the soldiers that made up the ranks of the Invalid Corps (later renamed the Veterans Reserve Corps), usually soldiers too wounded or ill to participate in combat but still considered useful in other war-related duties. In addition, there is chapter on the illnesses and temporary disabilities faced by soldiers in the ranks that often went unreported and untreated. Exhaustion, being sick, or having simple physical impairments (like sore feet) could lead to soldiers seeking rest, self-care, or medical attention—and this could lead to conflict with medical and military authorities who held power over the definition of wellness and disablity. The army needed manpower and officials needed to control the bodies of the men in ranks to most efficiently win the war, including using their bodies (dead or alive) for medical research in the new Army Medical Museum. Handley-Cousins examines all of these topics through the lens of military discipline, masculinity, medical knowledge of the time, and the expectations of society for men to act in certain ways. She deftly illustrates the conflict between disability or illness in the ranks and the expectation for men to uphold the highest standards of masculine and martial behavior. The amputee had a visible mark of sacrifice, but what about a man with an invisible wound or a chronic illness? How do they claim disability without facing charges of malingering or cowardice? How could a soldier with an “invisible” disability prove their claim for a pension?

Handley-Cousins uses Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain as her prime example of this problem. Known as a heroic officer in battles such as Gettysburg, Chamberlain was seriously wounded at Petersburg in June 1864. He survived and went on to be very successful in his post-war life as Governor of Maine and President of Bowdoin College. It is very easy to see him as not disabled and a veteran who was able to “overcome” his wartime injury. Yet, his wound remained serious for the rest of his life. He was in constant pain, went through several surgeries to try to find relief, his marriage suffered due to his injuries, and he ultimately died of an infection of his wartime wound. As Handley-Cousins stated, “Chamberlain was a casualty of war—it just had taken him fifty years to die” (73). Many previous works on veterans emphasize the veteran who successfully leaves the war behind and rejoins civilian society, and some pushback against new scholarship that questions the real impact of the war on soldiers claims that these works seek to “victimize” soldiers and veterans. Bodies in Blue does a fantastic job in showing the reality of the situation. Veterans like Chamberlain could be both “successful” and “disabled” and many veterans faced a life somewhere in the spectrum between those two concepts. Some could be disabled and still work while others might face more difficulty, but all were affected in some way by their wartime experience. Handley-Cousins does include a section on the idea of mental trauma; while she does not delve into arguing for or against its presence during the Civil War era, she does use soldiers confined to asylums to demonstrate how those experiences transformed the postwar period for both the soldiers and their families.

Because his wound was less visible and he was considered successful after the war, Chamberlain struggled with his applications for pension support. Pensions were meant to “pay back” the nation’s debt to its soldiers who had saved the nation, but the system could be very restrictive, especially as the nation moved farther away from the war and the huge expense led to fears of fraud. Pensions were awarded based on a man’s inability to labor and support their families; if a man was disabled but still able to work, they could be denied any support. A physical wound easily tied to wartime service was easier to claim, but long-term illness or debility, or a more invisible injury could lead to intense scrutiny from the pension examiners. In addition, veterans were expected to be moral, the highest standard of masculinity and social behavior. Alcohol, drug use (even if medically used for pain), or any social vices often appeared as reasons for a rejection on a pension application. Throughout the book Handley-Cousins deftly explored the contradicting expectations from society that soldiers/veterans both live up to the standards of masculinity while proving that they were unable to meet those standards in order to gain any relief or support. You can imagine that if Chamberlain struggled with the pension system as a well-known and respected politician, less famous veterans could face a lot of roadblocks in claiming support after the war.

Bodies in Blue is a well-written view into the lasting effects of war. Handley-Cousins uses disability studies as a framework and skillfully weaves the military and medical stories together with masculinity, social and cultural expectations, and the real experience of soldiers and veterans. Her work challenges the narrative that veterans could be victims or successes, disabled or whole, and places the reality along a spectrum of experiences. She illustrates how social and cultural expectations affected the veteran’s behavior during and after their service, and how this affected the rest of their lives. In the epilogue Handley-Cousins demonstrates that these same expectations still affect our modern soldiers and their abilities to receive care and support during and after their service, despite our better knowledge of disability and PTSD. Bodies in Blue is an important addition to Civil War scholarship, but also an enjoyable read for anyone interested in the Civil War, veterans, and the medical aspect of the war.

Dr. Kathleen Logothetis Thompson earned her PhD in Nineteenth Century/Civil War America from West Virginia University, and also holds a M.A. from WVU and a B.A. from Siena College. Her research is on mental trauma and coping among Union soldiers and she is currently working on her first book, tentatively titled War on the Mind. She currently teaches history at several colleges and university and leads tours of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Kathleen was a seasonal interpreter at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park for several years and is the co-editor of Civil Discourse.